


Son compaignun Rollant sur tuz humes

by ineptshieldmaid



Category: La Chanson de Roland | The Song of Roland
Genre: M/M, battlefield injuries, canon character death, medieval literature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-06
Updated: 2009-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>>He is beautiful, your Roland, with his sword held high, laughing into the sun. It hurts to look at him: the sunlight flying back from the gleaming surface of his armour burns in your sight, as the wild joy in him burns across your heart. You would you could keep him like this, frozen in this moment on horseback with the light shining around him and the roar of his troops in your ears. You would you could keep him as you love him most: racing hard across the snow; drunk on wine and festivity at Christmastide, your sister spinning in the counterpoint to his dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Son compaignun Rollant sur tuz humes

It has been a long campaign – seven years of slow marches and hopeless sieges and endless battlefield camps. The King has called an end, you all turn your heads for home, in the slow inexorable crawl of a great army on the move. It will be months before you are home, before you and your Companion are ensconced by Charles’ great hearth at Aix-la-chapelle: and yet you feel as if you are hurtling, charging, and seven years behind you serve only to build momentum, propel you inexorably into the breach of time.

Roland hates to be still. The sieges are the worst: he does not love this game, this glacial contest of time and tactics, though he is by no means a poor general. He is everywhere: striding up and down the lines, first in every sortie, pushing too far and too fast. In seven years, Durendal has barely rested in the scabbard: when not in the field, your Companion is hot-tempered and rash, his pride easily wounded and his courage quick to the challenge. Had not Charlemagne given express orders otherwise, you think he might have slain as many of your own men in petty contest as enemies in battle.

He is beautiful, your Roland, with his sword held high, laughing into the sun. It hurts to look at him: the sunlight flying back from the gleaming surface of his armour burns in your sight, as the wild joy in him burns across your heart. You would you could keep him like this, frozen in this moment on horseback with the light shining around him and the roar of his troops in your ears. You would you could keep him as you love him most: racing hard across the snow; drunk on wine and festivity at Christmastide, your sister spinning in the counterpoint to his dance.

You would you could keep him as you know him more deeply than others: the terrible restless fear in him, that rails against the storms and stalemates and orders that keep you still; when you would sit by the fire with a horn of ale and your dear Companion, he is always moving, cursing fate and the weather (but never his uncle the king). He makes excuses to fight, bandies insults and fools’ challenges, and you spar until the camp rings with the sound of your blades and your arms ache from the strength of his blows.

He is restful in sleep: sprawled on his belly, with his sword arm flung over his head. He is open, unguarded (though he keeps Durendal close to hand) and peaceful. Your treacherous heart would keep him so, would still the relentless storm in him: but you would not; you would rather him as he is before the army now, his hair brighter gold than any kings’ crown and his wild laugh more joyous than any carol, more rousing than any war-cry.

You would keep a moment frozen in time: but Roland hates to be still, shatters your captive seconds, and with a clatter of hooves you are all moving at once, the whole army in his wake. You, Olivier: you follow in his restless, stormy wake. An army is slow moving – your rearguard crawls slowly through the pass, and the Saracens roll inexorably across the plain below, and you feel as if you are hurtling, galloping headlong into the inevitable.

Roland revels in it, laughs in the face of the impossible. Nothing can touch him, or perhaps he does not care: his is a sharp, lethal need for something out of reach, something which has no care for life and limb. You are no coward yourself, you would lay down your life for your liege-lord and there is nothing you would not give for him, your heart’s companion. Yet to charge into defeat, crash onwards in the valour of the moment, heedless of the future and all responsibility… you argue, there on the field, both of you alive and blood singing in your ears. You trade words with one another and they tumble unchecked into blows side-by-side, into the heaving heady mess of battle; and this, this is Roland in his element, this never-still hungry seething clamour. You laugh with him, your Companion, break shields and rend helms, laugh as bones shatter and splinter and guts rend and spill, laugh over the shriek of horses and the foul sound of the dead and dying in the pass.

You were always the clear-eyed one: Roland tilted at a gallop into the moment before him, and it was always you who thought of the next, and the next, and all the long moments and years between Spain and the great hearth of Charles at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the end, though, your eyes run with blood and there is another man’s spear through your breast; when it comes down to this, there is nothing left but now, nothing to do but leap headlong, spur your horse on and bring your sword down, again, and again, and again, and each again might be your last. You are beyond thinking, beyond telling friend from foe: all you know is that you must not stop, must not be still, must keep moving and moving and moving and each moment is the last.

The helm buckles under your sword – whose helm, you know not, and care not, and it is enough that you keep moving and dealing blows unto the end. And yet – it is Roland’s voice which stops you, brings you to a shuddering halt in the midst of the tumult, and he is gentle, tender as if you were alone in the chambers of your fathers’ castle. When you were but children, you pardoned him the first blow, struck in anger for some small slight: and here he pardons you the last. What has become of the battlefield, you know not, and care not: you dismount, and lie upon the ground. Roland is beside you: at your last he is still, motionless but for his breath and his tears on your face. The last moments are brief, fleeting, but you feel as if you are dragging, sliding slowly into the inevitable breach of time. It takes an age to name them and bless them, Charles your king and France your country; and before the end there is an eternity in the last captured moment with Roland’s name on your lips.


End file.
